Yasashi egao
by HalocraZze
Summary: I've decided to write another fanfiction after my first one didn't really make it completely. It's about a few events that might have happened in the manga and anime if my OC had been there. I made it so it would look like sidestories about HOMRA and its members while the actual plot of the anime goes on.
1. PROLOGUE

**HOMRA**

**- PROLOGUE –**

It was raining.

The streets were completely vacant, just as always in this part of the city around this time.

The narrow passages were drenched in rain and the shallow light of the setting sun.

With the pavement completely covered with water which wouldn't stop pouring down, it didn't look as if it was June, way past the rainy season already.

The clouds weren't making way for any clear rays of sunlight, no matter how hard the sun kept on struggling.

Barely any shops were opened at this time of the day, only some pubs and shady restaurants that were calling out to their regulars with, by dust almost buried, lanterns, which weren't even able to light as far as two feet out into the street.

Just like it had always been there, the center of attention, so it looked from the outside, the, in red light glowing bar, was situated right in the corner between those darkened passageways.

With its bright shining headlights with the 5 simple letters HOMRA, the bar almost seemed familiar and warm to about anyone passing by.

-Almost-!

Most of the citizen walking past everyday wouldn't even notice the fact, that you barely ever saw anyone entering their door.

No one really cared about it, so they just kept ignoring it.

Anyway-

To stop giving explanations as to how it looked that day in the streets, we get back to a more important matter.

**09.49 pm:**

The doorbell rang as the door almost slammed open and caused the open sign on the outer side of the glass to jolt and swing on the doorknob back and forth like crazy.

There had only been about 2 cm that separated the door from the counter.

The blonde man behind the desk turned his head slightly to the left to see the person enter while bringing a bit of the storm that went on outside into the warm room.

"What a weather we got there…" The young man in his early twenties stated as he smiled while wiping another glass with a dust cloth.

From outside the windows, you could hear the wind going pretty loudly against the glass panes.

With eyes set on the sign on the door, the person started a reply to what the blonde man had just directed at the one still standing in the entrance.

"…Why are you still open anyways?"

The blonde man watched as the customer let his gaze wander around the spacious room.

You couldn't really tell, whether the person was a man or a woman, with a hood pulled deep into the face, you couldn't even say anything about his or her age.

At least you could tell by the slim shoulders, that the customer couldn't be any older than 30 or rather 25 years.

"Don't you want to take off that jacket to get a bit warmer?" the "bartender" asked not as politely as you'd ask a customer, while wiping off the counter.

The person shrugged and started moving a few steps into the center of the room.

"I didn't plan on staying for too long anyway."

The figure answered and nodded at the young man who slightly smiled after the rather cold reply.

"Well-"the man behind the bar started.

"You don't look like an adult to me, what business do you have with me?"

He leant over the counter with a smirk.

"Won't you drop this formal act, Kusanagi-san?"The person raised an eyebrow before bending colder to the man with one hand supported by a bar stool.

The so-called Kusanagi-san showed a wide smile, shortly closed his eyes while letting out a sigh and patted the persons head.

Surprisingly, the customer, who appeared to be quite a lot shorter than the young man, lifted his (…or her O.o?) head and showed a small, but honest smile to the bartender.

"So…" The customer began with Kusanagis hand still one the hood of the soaking wet jacket.

"Where did Totsuka run off to again?"

"I'm not sure, but let's save this for later-"

The man walked around the counter over to his -not so poorly known- customer.

"Let's get you out of this jacket, you're drenched."  
He didn't even wait for a reply and pulled the hood off his head and helped him free himself from the sopping wet cloth.

"Just put it one heater, I'll be leaving soon." The person said as Kusanagi already went as far as to bend down and loosen the knot of the left shoe of his customer.

"Take off those boots and take a seat, I'll go and prepare something hot to drink for you."

The blonde man spoke while rushing over to the counter to boil some water.

It seemed like the person wasn't really sure as to where it should be suited for a stranger to sit down.

The figure slightly flinched and hesitantly made his was over to the couch in the left corner of the room.

"Just make yourself at home!" The bartender called to him from over his shoulders.

"A-ah, okay."

Now, all nervousness seemed to have worn off of the person and he pulled both legs close to his chest as he sat down on the quite comfortable cushions.

"It got quite cold outside today, didn't it?"

The person lifted his head to watch the bartender come over to the couch with a cup from which a sweet scent emerged.

"It's okay like that." The other said while nodding in his direction.

"It was my fault to run around outside with that hurricane going on."

Both of them slightly smirked at that.

"What surprised me more was that no one except for you was here."

Kusanagi first looked at the person right in front of him, then let his eyes wander off to the door in the back of the room.

"I hope you didn't think Mikoto would show up here."

Again, both smiled and the customer made a snapping sound with his tongue.

"Is that ever the case?"

Kusanagi looked over to his customer who just took a few sips of the sweet liquid in his hands.

"But I was hoping for at least Totsuka to be around…"

The expression on the slightly older mans face softened as he saw his customers face to be close to sulking.

"Just like a kid…" He stated his thoughts with words.

And just as if it were to suit the,, the person looked into the cup and muttered a reply.

"…Baka o-ni-san!"

A few moments of silence followed in which the blonde man pulled out a cigarette from the pocket of his vest while a pair of curious eyes were watching him from right next to him.

He lit his cigarette without a lighter and took a deep breath.

"What did you want from Tatara-san?"

The person took some time to reply and took another sip of what was inside the cup in his hands.

"Haven't seen him in a while now…Even someone like me might start to his their big brother."

A gentle smile showed up on the blondes face.

"You're pretty talkative today, aren't you?" He let the ashes of his cigarette fall into an ashtray he had brought over from the kitchen along with the cup.

The person next to him still sat with both legs pressed to the chest and arms wrapped tightly around the knees on the couch.

"I…" The person's voice was a lot calmer than it had been before.

"…Don't plan to join you guys."

The young man let his eyes rest on his customer.

"I already know that that's not why you were here."

He let his upper body sink into the soft cushions of the couch at his back and looked at the ceiling.

"I came here with her permission, in case you wondered-"

The man smiled again and closed his eyes.

"I figured…I wouldn't let my child travel across the world just to have a little chat with some guys I don't even know, in a bar I don't know, in a land I've never been to."

"But if it was to meet up with their brother, you would?"

The person raised an eyebrow and looked over to the man.

"Haha-well, I don't have any, I wouldn't know."

The customers face went from a curious look to a slightly annoyed one.

"I always forget you're not that old geezer I'd take you for if I didn't knew any better."

Strangely, the blonde man didn't seem to be offended by any of those words. He just stretched out his hand and ruffled the "kids" head while keeping that warm smile of his.

"Well, I guess it's about time for me to leave-"

The person stated after a short look at the clock.

"Do I look like a man who'd let a minor leave at this time and weather outside, after drinking a hot cup of alcoholic tea?"

What a long explanation around the reason as to why he'd better not let his under aged customer go after giving away high percent alcohol illegally.

"It's not like I've been here for the first time."

The person got up and sent a crooked smile over to the man who looked at him.

He watched her for a bit before letting out a sigh and getting up.

"But is it okay for you to leave just like that without even seeing Totsuka?"

For a second, the person seemed to waver and let show a bitter expression for just a short moment.

"Well, I won't be coming here for the last time today."

The person slid into her still soaking wet boots and pulled his jacket off the heater while starting to move towards the exit.

With the blonde man watching him thoughtfully, the customer turned his back at him and reached out to the doorknob.

Just before the door was pulled open, the person stopped and turned around to face the young man.

"Better not tell anyone I was here, Suoh might not be too happy about that, I'm not one of you HOMRA's after all."

You could see it being a bit hard for the figure to leave, as it showed up in a fierce expression on his face although he managed to hide it in his voice.

"I won't." The tall man replied and looked down to his customer.

"Umm-Kusanagi-san…?" The person seemed to feel uneasy.

"Would you watch over Tatara for me?"

Now, you could finally see the person standing in the entrance could by no means be an adult.

With big, clear eyes as a child's, even Kusanagi was slightly startled.

"Be sure, I will."

The person nodded in relief as she knew that he wasn't telling a lie about it.

Without waiting for another second, the person stepped closer to the door and made his way out.

"It's always a pleasure meeting you…Chibi."

Kusanagi spoke to the figure in the doorframe, who winced noticeably and bent her head down, probably because her face had flushed read of embarrassments.

The last thing the tall man could see where the slim, tiny shoulders of his now leaving customer, before the young person was merging with the storm that still kept on raging.

"Be careful."

His words couldn't be brought out into night far enough as to reach the fading silhouette of the figure that had pulled its hood deep into the face again.

The face and thus brought feelings of this strange customer are still in mind when you'd ask the blonde bartender at HOMRA's about a story he could tell;

As well as the question whether those two siblings ever saw each other after that.

It should have only been a matter of time for Tatara to meet up with the person as the older brother.

That was the story of that rainy day from 3 years ago… No, more than just 3 years, on a Wednesday in June.

**- PROLOGU****E / END -**

**authors note: **

**Is it only because I'm German that it still seems weird to me to call a person "him" instead of "her" ?**

**It kind of bothers me all the time I had to do that in this text^^**

**But I didn't want to give further information about that person :)**


	2. Chapter 1

**1. I want to thank the one who already sent a review^^**

**2. I just noticed that there apparently is no red headlight-sign with HOMRA on it, neither in the manga, nor in the anime...what the hell have I been seeing there all this time...?**

**Well, anyway, enjoy the chapter :)**

**#1 Chapter of **

**- "Atatakai egao de hitotsu" –**

**3 years –and a little bit- later:**

Today, it was just like those days, on which you just hang around, hopefully doing nothing, while watching as time flies by your window.

Although it was only 4.30 pm in the afternoon, the sun had already gone way past noon time; winter was coming, so it seemed. Not a single cloud could be seen in the sky no matter how far you looked; just a mere week ago, it had been raining quite heavily.

And although it was such a seemingly nice day, the sign on the doorknob of the bar with the red headlights said closed.

The members of HOMRA had come together, well at least most of them that would drop by every once in a while at the bar in Shizume-cho.

There was still that old projector that stood in the middle of the room, with which the few men inside had been taking a look at old pictures the other day.

Kushina Anna, who had just a few minutes ago still been going through the taken snapshots for a second time, as not sitting on a bar stool at the counter.

She was calm as always and let 3 of her glass spheres roll in circles on the wooden surface of the bar, which the barman had purposely let fly over from England to Japan.

Leaving that aside, Kusanagi was standing behind the counter while smoking one of the few cigarettes that were still left in his package.

A giant man with rather dark skin and very bright hair was sitting right next to the tiny girl with the white hair and kept on forcing down his meal.

A bit more I the back of the room, there were 3 guys sitting on the 2 big sofas.

One of them wore a hood combined with a cap pulled deep into his face and a large pair of sunglasses covering his eyes, so you could barely see anything apart from his nose and mouth.

The other sitting on the same couch next to him, made a more friendly impression with his big eyes and messy light brown hair, which he had put under a cap.

The third man, who seemed to be slightly younger as the other two by what –one or 2 years- had leant back on the other couch with his right foot resting on the table between the two sofas.

He had his arms crossed over his chest and looked with his rather serious eyes out of the window.

He too, wore a beanie over his reddish-brown hair.

There were a few of the regular visitors missing as they had already gone home after staying at the bar since early in the morning, some of them had even been sitting there for the whole night, so it seemed.

It was already the 12th of December but the weather had been quite mild for the last few days.

There was rather a calm but still refreshing mood in the bar and it just so happened to seem like a pretty normal day today too.

That was also why no one really lifted their head in surprise as the doorbell suddenly rang and the last rays of light came shining right into the room, followed by the noises from the street and some unknown, but still familiar scent.

Even as the door was shut a bit roughly, no one, except for the blonde man behind the bar of course, greeted or at least paid attention to the customer, who had just come in, although the sign outside clearly said the place wasn't open at the moment.

A pair of light brown combat-style boots, who belonged to the person that just had entered the scene, paused before taking any steps further into the bar.

"Good afternoon, Kusanagi-san." A clear, calm voice spoke and the man behind the bar finally looked at his customer.

"Ah- So it's you."

With that, the others in the room seemed to have finally noticed that something was odd about the situation.

After all, the sign on the door had clearly said that the shop was closed, so they slowly came to realize.

"I didn't think that I would see your face around here anytime soon." The blonde man stated as he watched the person in front of him from behind of his goggles with sharp eyes.

The three guys at the back lifted their heads and watched the newcomer with quite curious eyes.

The small, doll-like girl had stopped letting her glass orbs swirl around and watched their visitor with bigger eyes than they already had been before.

Just like the giant guy stopped chewing still with his food halfway to his throat, Kusanagis' eyes lit up for a short while.

"But like always, it's a pleasure seeing those features of yours."

The blonde man in his mid-twenties put away his cigarette and bowed down to the one standing in front of him.

It was quite an unusual appearance this person had:

With combat boots reaching almost up to the knees, black over knee-high socks, jeans-shorts and a yellowish-green hoodigan, the quite young customer made a rather foreign impression; Even here, in Shizume town, where almost no one exactly looked Japanese.

The statue, no rather her figure was looking extraordinarily thin, the skin was still pale although you could see that she had been outside in the sun for quite a few times.

You could see that the one in the entrance had to be a woman without a doubt, at last when you saw her dark chocolate brown hair falling over her thin shoulders with light waves here and there.

While the customer was still looking at the blonde bartender wither head laid back in the neck since their height difference was simply too much, the young guy at the back of the bar had jumped out of his seat.

…Took him quite a while to realize that the one standing there across the room was a young woman or rather- a GIRL.

The young man was staring at her in a daze and pointed with shaking arms at her face.

"You-you're…!" The girl averted her attention from the bartender to the guy who pointed his finger at her while stuttering nonsensical words.

"I-I know you!"

Now, she looked at him with a calm look with a –not so calm expression- on her face.

"You're the one on that picture Totsuka-san took!"

The agitated guy hurried over to the projector in the corner of the room and put it back to where it had been standing for quite a while last night.

Kusanagi and the giant guy on the bar stool were looking at their younger clansman in surprise as he switched the projector back on and zapped through a ton of pictures.

The two other guys from the sofas had come closer since they were curious about what that kind of short guy was so eager to find in all those snapshots.

They exchanged curious looks with the girl and she shrugged her shoulders because she didn't know what kind of problem he had either.

"Um-Yata-san…? What exactly are you looking at?" Kusanagi asked the guy in the middle of the room.

"Ah-"The girl uttered and took a few steps closer to that Yata guy while looking at the projection on the wall.

"Look! That woman looks just like her!" Yata almost yelled still pointing a finger at her when it took him a few moments to realize what exactly he was doing until he flinched and pulled back from the projector.

"What…is that…?" The girl now asked with a slightly confused expression on her face as she started to feel left out since she didn't get what was going on.

"Araa…look what we got here ~" The guy with the light brown hair and nice looking face stated as he skipped through to a better resolution snapshot.

"Isn't that you on there?" The other guy with the "cloaked" by hood, shades and cap, face said.

"That's what I said just now, Bandou!" The short guy, Yata-something, yelled as he slapped the others' "patched-up" forehead.

"Hmm~" The bartender hummed and came around the bar to take a closer look of the picture projection on the wall.

They were all looking at the image of the city at night-time on which a middle length haired girl was standing on a rooftop while watching at the bright shining city lights.

The next one was a close up to her face as a sudden breeze let her hair sway in waves and she tried to brush it out of her face with her fingers.

The following one wasn't a picture but a short video in which you first heard the voice of a young man saying:

"August 13th, 9.45 pm; taking a glimpse at the lights and stars at night…"

Then, you could clearly hear footsteps getting closer to the girl standing on the balustrade and the wind that was blowing gently in the background.

The members of HOMRA literally stared at the video and didn't seem to listen to what the young mans' voice now said a lot more soft into the camera, so the one he was obviously filming in secret wouldn't notice she was being watched.

Even Anna had now slid off her seat and followed the giant-like guy as he walked forward to get a better view.

As the video continued the tiny girl tucked at the older woman's sleeve right as the person on tape noticed she wasn't really alone on the rooftop.

"Oi, what the hell-"The voice in the video piped up with a slightly but clear tone.

The girl flinched after jerking her head around to see what was going on and walked up to the cameraman quite fast.

"What do you think you're doing…?"

She tried to reach for the camera and you could clearly hear the young man giggle with an amused voice.

"Agh-Chotto…!" Her voice continued and she was staring right into the camera lens up-close.

For a really short moment you could see her light green eyes looking even more furious as her voice sounded, followed by the startled words of the young man behind the camera.

"Iya- No, wait!" he almost wailed as a last picture flashed up.

The young face of the woman, who seemed to have effectively "silenced" the cameraman, looked a last time into the lens with a more concerned look on her face as the light of the camera went out.

The words following sounded a bit muffled as she most probably had out her hands on the lens.

"…Geez- Tatara…"

Then the recording stopped with a "click" and left puzzled looks on the face of those who had just been watching the short, but strange clip.

* * *

The girl that undoubtedly was the same as on the tape, just stood there with her arms crossed in front of her chest and looked like she really didn't want to be there at this exact moment.

You could see that she was feeling more and more uncomfortable in her skin as the guys' looks were going from the projector over to her face.

"Well yeah-um-" She started as the bartender suddenly stepped closer and stood in front of her.

"Let's see…" He said as he bent down, put a finger at her chin to lift it up and stared at her face with his head tilted to the side and a sneaky grin on his face.

The other guys in the bar caught their breath and stared at the blonde barman.

"Okay."

The tension increased even more until-

"Yeah, it's her- not that I really wondered about it in the first place."

You could almost hear the HOMRA guys screaming out their thoughts about him being an idiot…or rather something worse.

"Damn you; what the hell?!" That short guy called Yata yelled at the taller man and was close to jumping at him.

"Kusanagi-san!" A sharp voice interrupted their "argument".

"I didn't come here just for being made fun of!"

The woman continued with a sour look on her face and an annoyed tone in her usually so clear voice.

"My bad." The bartender said as he walked past the shorter clansman with the pissed expression and bowed down for a second as an apology.

"I'm proud to introduce to you; the charming lady: Hoshi."

There was something like a vein on the so called charming lady' forehead which had started twitching almost uncontrollably because of that mocking tone in his voice.

"That's not what I meant either!" She snarled even more pissed off than before.

"But yeah. Just call me Hoshi for now."

She added as she quickly waved at everyone in the room.

"Sou-ka! You're the one who Totsuka-san was talking about with Kusanagi-san." The young man with the nice face said as he gave the girl an overly enthusiastic smile.

"I'm Shouhei and this-"He pulled the "masked" guy next to him "Is Bandou-kun." He continued and offered the woman his hand.

She just looked down at his fingers which were waiting for her to join, but the girl bowed and avoided the quite friendly gesture in a pretty skilled way.

"I remember that coward showing a picture of you two when you were about 4 years younger."

Although she still had an indifferent expression on her face, her eyes looked at the two men in a soft and thus quite familiar way.

Without really knowing how to react to what the two guys just saw, both of them seemed flattered by that overwhelmingly calm composure of hers as they scratched the back of their heads in unison.

The woman, err- Hoshi, had already went past those two sheep-faces and started walking up to the chubby guy who stood in front of the counter.

They looked at each other for a short while as the obviously smaller one of them sticked out a finger and started poking the other.

"I see…You haven't changed, Kamamoto-kun." She said to him in a non-offensive way.

"Y-Yooo…" The so-called Kamamoto responded with a dumbfounded grin on his face.

He put both his hands on the smaller girls' shoulders and continued with a friendly and bright expression on his face.

"Nice to have you here again!"

After nodding to him, Hoshi suddenly felt a movement on her sleeve. As she looked down to check who had pulled at her shirt, she looked right into big, innocent, red eyes.

"Ah-" The taller woman uttered and put her hand on the child's snow white head.

"I see, you're growing up." She said while looking at the younger one with a slightly warm expression.

Anna looked at her with the typical blank face and almost whispered.

"She's familiar."

The green-eyed girl suddenly had a puzzled look on her face before she understood and leant down, slightly bending her knees to have direct face-to-face eye contact.

With a curious look in her calm eyes, the older girl looked at the doll-like girl in front of her.

Then, since no one expected the usually so silent and shy girl to act so out of character, it didn't only leave the guys, but even Hoshi dumbfounded.

With her tiny white hands, the white haired girl had pulled the older girl closer to her while hugging her quite tightly.

"U-Uh?" Hoshis voice wouldn't come out right as she felt those confused and even "shocked" gazes of the men behind her on her back.

"…Don't be sad." Anna whispered in her ear what made it hard to hear even for the girl she was now letting go of.

Hoshi straightened her back as she hesitantly got up slowly.

"I didn't know she had grown up to such an intelligent and pretty girl." She said as she got hold of herself.

Now it was Kusanagi that started speaking.

"Well…it's been almost 5 years since you last saw her." He said while giving the long haired woman in front of him a half hearted smile.

Hoshi turned around, not really going further into detail and now faced the one, who hadn't been saying a single word after everyone had greeted their customer.

"So, you are…Yata -uh- kun, I guess?" She asked the only remaining man in the room who now looked somewhere else with a flustered face and slightly pink flushed cheeks.

"J-Just Yata is fine." He slightly stammered still avoiding her eyes.

The girl raised an eyebrow, let out a sigh and looked at Kusanagi who had raised his voice.

"Ooh, well Yata-chan, seems like Totsuka-san told a charming girl about you."

He said it in a mocking sing-sang tone which caused the short guy to flinch.

"Is that so?!" He asked more rhetorical than being serious.

"Yeah."

His head jerked around and his eyes accidentally me the girls.

"That stupid Tatara told me quite a few things about you guys…" She muttered in her thoughts before she noticed the sudden change on the young mans face as she had mentioned Totsuka. She decided to change the topic as she lowered her eyes in slight apology.

"Uh- he described you as that short guy with the cute name…or something like tat."

Now, the slim guy with the beanie over his head got all fidgety and almost jumped at her as he suddenly came closer to her face with a grim expression.

"You're not that tall either!" he groaned at her still –not so impressed- face.

"And I'm a girl." She countered with an indifferent voice which caused the chestnut haired guy to flinch and step back from standing quite close to her so she could look down on her.

"Tch." He snapped and turned his, bright red of anger colored, face away from the cheeky girl.

"…Nice to meet you…I guess." She murmured.

"Maa…Well." Kusanagi interrupted the tense atmosphere and caused Shouhei and Bandou to stop giggling because of their short, smoking of anger, clans mate.

"Let's put this aside." He nodded off any sign of restraint of the short guy and locked his eyes on Hoshi who responded with a calm look on her face.

"You-" The blonde man put one of his hands on the smaller guys shoulders, who still had a pissed off look on his young face.

"Will show her to Mikotos room, that way you can get to know each other even better."

Yatas face went blank as he glared up to the blonde man who watched him through his shades with a cocky grin.

"Kuh-!" He snorted as he had to admit defeat and made a sign in Hoshis direction to tell her she should come along.

The young woman bowed down the blonde man and said a few words before going after the guy who happened to be only a little bit taller than her.

"Good that you got what I came here for, that saved me the breath to give futile explanations, Kusanagi-san."

With this, she walked out of the other men's views, who were letting out relieved sighs as the atmosphere started to loosen up.

"So…" Shouhei started.

"This must be his sister, uh?"

Kusanagi watched his younger friend for a short while and nodded with a weak smile as he noticed the slightly bitter look in both, Kamamotos' and Shouheis' eyes.

It seemed like they exactly knew what the others were thinking about as they looked at the door, which lead to the staircase to their "boss'" room.

* * *

While Hoshi followed the other teen up the stairs, he suddenly started muttering a few words.

"To think that another under aged kid would join us…"

The thin girl could not help but feel the disagreement in his low voice.

"Actually-" She raised her own voice.

"I'm apparently only a few years younger that you are yourself."

The younger teen didn't get an answer to that as Yata had honestly been thinking about her being the same age as him.

As both of them reached the last few steps and ended up in front of a door, he suddenly stopped and straightened his back to hold a more serious posture.

"Better prepare yourself-" he told her in a short warning sentence as he took a deep breath before knocking on the door and pushing it open without waiting for an answer from the other side of the room.

**#1 Chapter of**

**- Atatakai egao de hitotsu-**

**-END-**

* * *

**authors nooote:**

**And with this, the file in which I saved all the new data has increased by 29 mb and more than 15k carachters (Space, digits, letters usw.).**

**I know I shouldn't really update so fast, but I just wanted this to be up soon.**

**The next chapters will take a while more to update since I had this chapter already written on my noteblock and just had to type it in.**

**Btw, that's how I always do it, write per hand, then type it on my PC.**

**Thanks for reading this chapter and we'll hopefully see each other again next time.**

**...my back hurts.**


	3. Chapter 2

**#2 Chapter of**

**- Atatakai egao de hitotsu –**

…Was it strange for her not to be afraid of what might await her behind that door?

Well, she never had been someone to be easily shocked in the first place, whatever would happen now, it couldn't be that bad anyway.

She was just about to meet up with the "Red King", Mikoto Suoh, who she had already met when she had been quite a lot younger than she was now.

And so, she waited for the guy who accomplished her to open the door and letting her pass.

Inside, it was completely dark –and when I mean dark, it was pitch black- like you couldn't see anything at all.

But still, you could tell that there was someone in the room although you couldn't see further as a mere meter in front of you since the light from the staircase couldn't shine all the way up here.

"Yo, King!" Yata yelled with an enthusiastic voice completely out of nowhere and made Hoshi jump as she heard him shout like that.

Although there was nothing but silence following, the chestnut haired guy still had a confident, cheeky smile on his face.

There was a slight movement a bit more at the back of the room they just entered and the girl concentrated her eyes on the point where she could vaguely see the silhouette of a person.

Her eyes got used to the darkness pretty soon and she decided to just walk up to the one sitting a few meters in front of her.

She noticed the guy behind her flinch as she started moving just like that, but the girl ignored it since what she had come here for was way too important to get distracted and stop so close before meeting him.

After taking a few steps, the girl suddenly stopped as she felt a change of the atmosphere as it seemed to have gotten a bit hotter around her.

"So you're awake." She just bluntly asked the man in front of her.

"I wouldn't have been surprised if you weren't." The girl continued with a calm voice as if she knew what he was thinking.

After that, the room suddenly lit up and Hoshi had to blink several times before turning her head to where the door was.

"There's a switch, you know?" The guy who leant on the wall said in an ironic way.

Hoshi hesitantly avert her eyes off the guy who still couldn't look at her and stood now face to face with the man she had come for.

Light brown eyes looked up to her quite tired and slightly annoyed. His hair, as red as the aura surrounding him, was in a mess and the expression on his face made a smile show up on the girls' face, for just a small moment though.

"…You're noisy." The redhead muttered and pressed the palms of his hands on his temples.

"Leave, if you only came here to chat…" He finishes his sentence and glared up to the younger woman standing in front of him. The silence, which followed was filled with tension and the guy leaning on the wall seemed to get bored as he hissed quite noticeably.

He couldn't see the expression that had carved into the girls' face as she stared down on the man in front of her in disgust. He, although being in front of a murderous faced woman, smirked and didn't seem to be impressed by all her disapproval at all. Instead, he shook his head with closed eyes and smirked in a quite strange way.

The woman lowered her eyes as she knew what would happen next.

After a few seconds just staying like that, the red haired man leant back into his seat and slowly reached out his arm and opened his hand while looking up to the woman with an indifferent look in his yellowish-brown eyes.

As the pale skinned girl still didn't seem to move, the young man, who had just been standing there in the entrance without saying a single word, now raised his voice and directed it at the girl who was pointing her back at him.

"Try shaking hands with him, it's as easy as that."

The look in the girls' eyes was even more dreadful as she kept staring at the hand that waited for hers.

She glanced at the older mans' face and earned another indifferent but tired look what made her clench her teeth.

It seemed like the girl didn't like what she saw as bright flames shot up from the mans hand all of a sudden and lit up the "Kings'" face in a kind of devilish way.

"They won't burn you…" The words of the short man rang in her ears as he had raised his voice for another time a little more gentle than it had sounded before.

"Unless you're too weak, that is…" He added with a clicking sound of his tongue.

The girl straightened her back and stared down at the "burning" hand even more disgusted than before already.

Her face flinched for another time as she gritted her teeth and slowly let her left hand down from her chest, where she had subconsciously clutching her shirt.

Still quite hesitantly, she spread her fingers and closed her eyes as she was just about to take his hand against her will. She flinched as her fingers made contact with the skin on his fingers and her face became slightly distorted before she finally grabbed his hand.

All 3 people in the room were waiting for the flames to spread from the man over to the woman, when it would be decided whether she was suited for it or not.

But nothing like that happened as the young guy at the back had come a few steps closer to check what was going on. Hoshi was shaking hands with their king, so why didn't anything happen?

She indeed had grabbed his hand, quite tightly at that, but the flames didn't wander up her skin.

It was rather like there was something that stopped the red haired mans fire right before it spread to the others hand.

"It's not your power I want." She said in a calm but slightly cold tone.

The young man behind her was about to jump forward disbelieving what the woman dared to say to their king's face.

But surprisingly, the red haired man didn't seem angry or taken aback by what he just heard. He let a smirk show on his face as he looked into the woman's eyes through which she gave him a weak sign to let go of her hand.

Only a few seconds later, the girl winced as bright red flames were making their way up her arms to her neck as they had completely surrounded her.

"Ah!-" She wanted to complain as the man seemed to do the exact thing she had wanted to avoid.

"Be quiet." He interrupted her with a calm voice and slowly let go of her now shaking hand as she had a tense expression on her face.

Her head jerked upwards in surprise and she reached out for the right side of her neck when she saw the flames around her fading away without a sound.

The red king looked up to her for a last time and could see her face relax as she felt something under her fingertips. The woman in front of him sighed in slight relief and stepped back from the man while watching him with quite calm eyes again.

"Damn it…Suoh."

Her words sounded way too familiar with that clear, almost friendly voice of hers.

He had just closed his eyes again and didn't pay attention to the two younger people still standing in front of him.

Before taking her leave, the woman looked at the red king's face and just showed a weak but warm smile for the first time since she had been in the bar.

"Arigatou-ne…" She silently whispered before turning around and walking past the short guy who stared at her in surprise as he let her step down the stairs before him.

With an asking look in his eyes, he took a glance at his king over his shoulders and slowly shut the door behind their backs.

…What the hell just happened?!

* * *

As both of them had gone down in complete silence, Hoshi was still feeling a bit strange after having her arms covered in flames what she wasn't really fond of to be honest. She had actually just wanted to see him again since she shouldn't stay in that place anymore because she wasn't an official member of HOMRA. What made her feel uncomfortable even more, was that he seemed o have given her a part of his power but she had never received even the slightest bit of it. It was a good thing the short guy wasn't walking where he could see her face; her eyes were still fiercely staring since she was deep in her thoughts, but the rest of her face gone blank.

"…Just what exactly did he do?" She kept asking herself as she was walking down the stairs and touched the spot on her neck where she could still feel the warm place where his flames had carved into her skin.

* * *

It didn't take that long for the two to get down to the others again and that just made it even stranger as the girl lifted up her head and saw 3 quite familiar faces she hadn't seen before those 10 minutes in which they had been upstairs.

"Ah-!" She uttered startled and paused right on the last step as there were suddenly 3 more people in front of her.

The short, chestnut haired guys who had walked behind her almost bumped into her and jerked back as his cheeks turned red.

There were 2 men still standing in the entrance and another one, slightly younger, sitting on a barstool, all 3 of them with eyes widened in surprise as their looks met with the girl's.

"Hoshi?!" The man with the messy brown hair said as he recognized her and hurried over to her.

"My gosh - Whoa! So it really is you!" He continued almost yelling overly enthusiastic while his eyes mustered her from head to toe.

The other man with the black hair and a hat on top of it looked almost as surprised as the guy who had grabbed the girl's shoulders as if e was to lift her up and swirl her around like a little kid any moment.

"U-uh, yeah hi." She couldn't help but be slightly startled at the sudden excitement and happy since she saw their familiar faces.

"Hey hey!" A voice came from behind the bar.

"Leave her some space, would you?" Kusanagi spoke unable to hide a smile that had showed up as the situation just seemed way too happy.

The one with the hat started laughing as the brown haired guy now attempted to hug the girl, disregarding her pushing his face away to avoid being cuddled to death.

"D-Dewa!" She shrieked as the guy had finally managed to grab her and pull her closer while smiling brightly like a child.

"Do something about this!" She continued with her left hand on his chest and the other one manically poking his back.

"Now now, Chitose." Dewa said to his friend.

"Let go of her, this is close to harassment, remember, she's a minor."

Those words caused Hoshi to try to push away the older man and Chitose to laugh even harder as the girl finally managed to dodge another attack and gasped completely out of breath.

"Gee- It's always the same with you!" She hissed, too out of breath as to punch him, hence she only flicked his forehead with her finger.

Still slightly irritated, she looked to her left, where an extremely thin, bleach blonde man was sitting on the counter and now raised his voice.

"Oi, look who's here." He said louder.

"The Chihuahua…" At these words, the short guy still standing halfway on the stairs snapped and clenched his fist.

"What was that?!" He yelled with one eyebrow dangerously twitching.

"And an even shorter girl…" The bleach blonde finished slightly proud that he had caused the guy with the beanie to snap again.

Well, what the bloody hell?

Hoshi was simply overrun by the sudden change of characters in this room and she nodded to the extremely skinny boy and started muttering a few words.

"Nice seeing you too, Eric…"

Only then did she realize the guy standing behind her who was almost boiling.

"Sorry…!" She said to him as she instantly made way for him to pass, just to see him slide off the stairs and jump at the blonde man, who had just called him a Chihuahua.

…In what way aver that had offended him.

The following commotion almost caused them to fight which luckily only resulted in an uproar as now suddenly more than just the two arguing guys were involved.

"I see…" The startled girl started and blinked for a few times before she continued a bit more calm again.

"They're still this noisy…"

She looked to Kusanagi in a quite helpless way and he smiled in agreement.

"Oh well…-" She mumbled blankly while walking over to Anna who watched her with big eyes as the older woman leant on the barstool on which the doll like girl was sitting.

She couldn't help but feel crazily remembered on events like this, which had taken place quite a lot of time ago when she had paid her brother a visit.

As the memories of that time suddenly flashed up in front of her eyes, she just sighed while watching what was happening in front of her with a warm and soft expression on her face.

* * *

It had gotten dark outside the windows already and the mood had finally, after 3 and a half hours of non-stop shouting, settled as most of the men had become too tired to argue.

Kusanagi was still standing behind the bar although he leant on one of the tall shelves that reached up to the ceiling.

There were bottles of alcohol lying on the floor around the sofas and on top of the table; most of the HOMRA guys had sat down on the large couches. With 4 people on each sofa, they had to sit close to each other to barely fit on the seats.

The brown haired girl was sitting next to Anna on the counter and watched the guys in the corner of the room as they settled down and looked as if they were about to fall asleep.

She looked down to her cup and lifted it up as the last drops of her drink ended up on her tongue and left a slightly tickling feeling as it reached her throat.

"Kusanagi-san." She started with her calm voice and the man behind the bar looked at her.

"It's empty again…"

She pushed it across the counter and watched the older blonde as her picked it up and was about to fill it up again.

"What…another?!" The short guy from the couch raised his voice and gave her a skeptical look.

"It's on mee!" Chitose slurred enthusiastic and made a hilarious face as he thought it looked like he was sending the younger girl a charismatic smile.

"Don't be stupid." Shouhei uttered as he seemed to be the only one that wasn't half drunk already.

"For her, it's for free, right?" He asked Kusanagi and earned an agreeing nod.

"I wouldn't do that…" The girl interrupted them with her clear voice as her cup got another re-fill.

"You say that, but it's not like you'd ever turn it down…" Kusanagi said mockingly as the girl gave him an indifferent look while she already took another sip of the liquid in her cup.

The older blonde man replied with a soft smile and patted her head like he had done it multiple times already.

Hoshi closed her eyes at his movement and silently smiled into her cup so no one could see her face.

"Oi oi." Kamamoto raised his voice and turned his head to the bartender.

"Another refill and all your Amaretto's gone…"

He ended his sentence with a short outburst of laughter as the girl made a funny noise with her throat and looked at the chubby man with a smirk on her young face.

"Nah." Kusanagi uttered and waved it off with his left hand before he continued.

"I only gave her the cheap one, it's no problem."

Hoshi flinched at that, almost as if she had to suppress her laughter and glared at the blonde man in a way, you couldn't really describe as angry or serious anymore.

"Hey – isn't she still a minor?" Another voice came from the couch.

"Isn't she accompanied by enough men who are old enough?" Chitose replied.

"Doesn't that make it even worse?"

They simply smiled at that as if the didn't really care about it anyway.

"…Are you making fun of me because I'm the youngest one in here?"

The girl asked rhetorically while raising an eyebrow.

"Well, after Anna of course." She continues and gave the tiny girl next to her a warm look as the younger of them looked at her with big eyes.

Kusanagi started smiling and walked around the bar to the sofas and picked up the empty bottles on the floor. He casually shoved a pair of legs, which seemed to belong to Dewa, out of his way and let them fall down again as he could walk past.

Kusanagi ended up in front of Bandou, who was lying with his hands folded over his chest and his legs spread out on the floor while it seemed like he was sleeping quite peacefully until the blonde bartender watched him for a second and then looked at Shouhei, who was supporting Chitose with his shoulders so the older man wouldn't fall off his seat as he was just about to fall asleep too.

"Well, I guess we'll be taking our leave then." The light brown haired man said, still with the common smile on his face as he stood up with Chitose under his arm and giving Eric a sign to come with him.

"I'd better get going too…" Dewa said and got up while making his way to Bandou who he tried to wake up.

"Gotta watch over him. He drank way too much again, considering that he's weak to alcohol." He sighed and smiled weakly as he asked Kusanagi to help him pick the hooded man off the ground.

A the 5 men had reached the exit, they were saying goodbye one after another and Shouhei even looked at Hoshi to bow down politely before walking out of the now almost empty bar. The girl nodded back after saying goodbye and then slid off the barstool she had been sitting on.

"They're just way too nice…" She uttered as she let out a sigh, scratched the back of her head and walked to the empty couch with the tiny, white haired girl following her.

"It's a good thing, isn't it?" Kamamoto, who had stayed when most of the guys had already left, said to the girl who squatted down and pulled her legs to her chest while taking another sip of the warm alcohol in her cup.

As she looked at the couch in front of her, there was that chestnut haired guy making himself at home by taking up almost all the place on the sofa as he lay there with his arms behind his head and his legs spread straight over the cushions.

"Yata-san…" Kamamoto started after a quick look at the clock.

"It's already half past 11."

As the guy lying on the couch didn't seem to give an answer, his taller friend got up from the barstool he had pulled over to the couch and let out a tired sigh.

"Guess I'll leave without this guy…" he said to himself quietly and carried the stool back to the counter from where he had brought it over.

"…What's with this guy?" Hoshi asked after taking a glimpse of the boy's face who had his eyes closed and didn't react to the conversation earlier. The doll-like girl was sitting still on the couch next to the older girl and slightly leant her head on the others shoulder while looking quietly ahead of herself.

"He's not been himself these past few days."

Kusanagi replied as the chubby man looked a bit down.

The girl's gaze lowered to the young guys face when there was a slight depressed look in her eyes as Kamamoto continued softly, so his younger friend's sleep wouldn't be interrupted.

"He's been here for almost the whole time without taking a break." There was a clear sign of worry in his voice.

"I doubt he's been home since that time…"

The blonde man patted Kamamotos back and raised his voice.

"It's not like he's a bother to us here. Just let that idiot rest and he'll be almost as new again…"

With that, he came back to the couches again, gently took off the large headphones off the teen's neck and put them on the table next to him.

He looked at the small girl that rested her head on Hoshis lap while the older girl had one of her hands on her shiny hair.

"I guess you two will be okay?" the tall man asked the brown haired girl after checking if Anna really had fallen to sleep or not. After giving the blonde man a reassuring look, she chuckled and talked to Kamamoto who seemed to be still worried about his younger friend.

"Just go home, he's not gonna wake up anytime soon…" Her voice sounded calm and refreshing while she grinned at the chubby guy cheekily.

"You look terrible."

Kamamoto let out a laugh and sighed again before nodding at Kusanagi and waved at the doll like girl that had opened her eyes.

"G'night." The bartender said as he led him to the door.

"Make sure you send this idiot home after he wakes up!"

With that, Kamamoto left with a weak smile on his still worried face.

After a few minutes, it had become completely silent and Hoshi patted the younger girl's head to tell her to sit up.

"I'll be going to bed soon, don't worry." She said calmly to the blonde barman who had a concerned look on his face.

"Just give me a second, I'll try and wake Mikoto up, he's gonna take his nap downstairs since you'll be having the room up there." He said with a friendly voice while pointing his finger up to the ceiling.

"Ah-" The brown haired girl uttered.

"No nee, he already went there himself-"

"When?" The expression on the older mans face loosened up for a second as he seemed a bit surprised.

"A few hours ago already." She chuckled and shook her head.

"And you should better head home too…" The girl continued calmly.

The blonde man nodded slowly as his face suddenly looked extremely tired for the first time this evening. Hoshi gave him a worried look and furrowed her eyebrows.

"Anna." The blonde man started and the girl sat up straight.

"Want to stay here and watch over Mikoto for me?"

The girl's eyes seemed to lighten up at his words and she nodded in agreement before Kusanagi continued with a warm look on his exhausted face.

"Okay then."

With this, he went over to the exit.

Hoshi gave him a warm smile as she saw the extremely worn out expression on his face and he responded to her gesture with a weak smile before he went out the door and left.

* * *

She couldn't help but feel relieved as even the man, who had been a very good friend of hers ever since they had first met 8 years ago, had finally left.

With him, the last bit of her happy façade she had built up around her like a wall, was slowly crumbling as she let out a long sigh.

There had been tension hanging in the air although it had seemed as if everything was alright since all those guys had tried to loosen up the atmosphere by laughing and talking like nothing had happened at all.

The girl took off her boots and slowly stood up from her seat while patting the white haired girls head as she pulled on the other woman's sleeve.

"You really are addicted to them, aren't you…?" She asked the girl with a soft look in her eyes as she walked up to the fridge behind the counter, grabbed a package of milk, poured it into a glass and came back to the couch while Anna looked up to her with bright eyes.

The small girl took the glass out of the older ones hands that had slightly bent down to her and stared at the white liquid between her tiny fingers.

"Sorry-" Hoshi uttered.

Should I've warmed it up? I'm not really used to situations like these." She kept talking slightly fast and with an apologetic look on her face.

The white haired girl stayed as quiet as she always was before looking into the glass and took a sip of her drink.

"…Arigatou…" She whispered what made a quiet smile pop up on the taller girl's face before she went to the switch to turn off the lights as she figured it would seem more relaxing for both of the people in the room apart from her.

"Do you mind?" She asked softly and earned a slightly negating gesture as the one she asked quietly shook her head.

After that, the room went dark and completely silent as the young woman took a look out of the windows up to the clear night sky.

She had slowly settled down and was completely calm now, since there was no one around to stir her up like all those men who had filled the place with all their laughter what had given the room a warm feeling.

Slowly, without making a noise, she walked with bare feet to the middle of the room, pulled the old projector to her side and checked a last time if the young man on the couch was asleep.

With a soft chuckle, the girl noticed his calm and steady breathing and took a look at his relaxed face while she leant over the couch as he seemed to sleep quite soundly.

She stood up carefully to not make any unnecessary movements which might wake him up and walked over to the end of the sofa and spoke to the younger girl in a reassuring way.

"Go ahead and sleep, I'll wake you up before heading upstairs."

The small girl seemed to be relieved after her words and rested her head on the soft cushions before closing her eyes and rolling over to the side to get in a more comfortable position.

After a while, when the girl could be 100 percent sure she was the only one awake, she squat down with her back leaning onto the foot end of the couch on which the young guy was sleeping.

She let out a sigh and took a deep breath before she pressed the switch on the old projector and an unsteady, white picture flashed up, slowly becoming clearer.

The girl had to squint her eyes since she could not quite recognize the person on the snapshot as it seemed like someone had taken it subconsciously.

After another look, she shook her head and let out a laugh as she realized who it was on the picture.

There was the left half of a face right in front of the camera lens and another quite dumbfounded looking guy with spiky ash-blonde hair in the background.

Seems like Tatara had taken a picture tight in the moment in which Eric wanted to stop him from photographing them and Fujishima behind him, who didn't look like he was aware of the situation which he had gotten into.

With a soft chuckle, the girl zapped further through all the pictures her older brother had taken in all those years in which he had been with his king and Kusanagi-san.

There were tons and tons of snapshots taken at night, his favorite time of the whole day, so she knew.

He had told her why he loved the few minutes right after sunset when she had asked him as both of them had still been way younger than Hoshi was and her brother would be today.

He had told her it was because everything would look more pretty in the light, but even all this ugly stuff would simply fade at night and only the beautiful things were left.

As easy as that.

Hoshi couldn't help it but feel nostalgic while watching all the memories of times in which she had been far across the continent, separated from her brother.

The pictures kept flashing up in projections on the wall one after another and the brown haired girl let out a deep sigh as she embraced her legs with her arms, rested her head on her knees and kept watching the constantly changing images in front of her like that.

"He…is somewhere else now, isn't he?" She subconsciously murmured to herself as the projections on the wall were mirrored in her calm, but tired eyes before she slowly closed them and pressed her thighs even tighter to her chest.

With her head buried under her hair that softly fell over her face as she dug deep into her arms, the snapshots were steadily projected on the wall like a slideshow, to which appeasing flickering the other two were soundly sleeping on the couches.

* * *

Hoshi seemed to have almost fallen asleep as a sudden sound made her snap out of it and she lifted her head up to see a certain video as a projection on the wall.

She furrowed her eyebrows before she realized which shot it was.

With surprised eyes she slowly got up still leaning onto the couch as she saw the video which the members of HOMRA had been watching with her the day before.

The soft and kind voice behind the camera had caused her to wake up as she heard her brother talking to her.

She was about to go back to sleep again as she noticed the words she couldn't hear clearly while watching the scene before.

For a second time, the girl heard the cameraman walk up to the person he was filming as she jumped up and walked closer to the image on the wall.

"…What beautiful stars we have up there tonight…"

Hoshi***** literally froze in her movement for a second and stopped breathing as she heard the fascinated sounding voice of her brother.

These words kept echoing in her mind as the video continued with her gaping emptily at the wall until the recording stopped with the all too familiar 'click' she couldn't hear anymore. Even after the picture had gone black again, the gaze of the light green eyes was looked on the wall with a stain of shock inside them. Before she could lower her eyes in bitterness, the wall in front of her suddenly lit up again and projected a reflection on the girl's face once again. Her face softened while slowly walking up to the picture in front of her as she recognized the photo.

It was no other than the one she and taken on that mild day in spring 5 years ago, when she came to visit Japan alone for the first time.

The way how the background looked pale in comparison with the main object in the picture, it could only have been one of her snapshots.

The face of the young male with his pretty, blonde hair was too familiar as he smiled with the warmest smile someone had ever given her into the camera, more precisely directed at the one behind it. For a short moment, the girl let all her restraint fall as the last bit of her façade finally crumbled. Before she knew it, she stood close to the image and had reached out with her left hand to touch the familiar smile of the kind face she tensely stared at.

"Tch…" She hissed as it seemed like she had to force herself to snap out of it before turning her back at the projection with her eyes closed.

At about the same time, there was a slight movement in the back of the room which the distracted girl could not spot anymore. Two hazel colored eyes where slowly blinking half asleep at the picture in front of him.

Who was that…?

He asked himself before falling deeper into his dreams again, already banning the image of an all too familiar face and the woman helplessly staring at it off his mind.

It was awfully silent…

**- Chapter #2 / END -**

*** **_Hoshi is the romaji of 'star'...got it ;)_

**author's note:**

**Whew... updated at last, let me tell you I wouldn't have made it if I hadn't written the last few pages this morning.**

**This kind of longish chapter has the scene in it, which caused me to write this fan fic to begin with ;)**

**I'm off to a birthday on which I'll be performing^^**

**See you soon...maybe ~**


	4. Chapter 3

** #3 Chapter of **

**- "Atatakai egao de hitotsu" –**

The next day, the 13th of December, it had gotten a bit colder and the sun had just appeared behind some clouds that had covered the whole sky since early in the morning. The bar in downtown Shizume was still closed and no one seemed to be inside.

Kusanagi, the owner, hadn't been in there since the evening before and so, all the staff members were absent.

But still, although there shouldn't be any customers allowed in the shop, there were noises coming down from upstairs. After a few minutes of constant movement on the second floor, the door slowly opened and the slim, naked foot of a woman stepped down the stairs still a bit hesitantly.

With a long yawn, the girl entered the main room of the building and meddled with her long, brown hair, that only looked a little messy although she hadn't yet have the feeling of brushing it, so she just swished them out of her face.

She looked around the place while walking around the counter to the oven and saw her surroundings neatly organized, as if there had never been a lot of customers in here just a mere 9 hours ago.

"Huuh…" Hoshi let out a long, deep sigh as she pressed her thumbs against her temples before continuing her walk to the kitchen.

She hadn't felt like eating since a few days and so she decided to just go with her regular cup of coffee in the morning, although she didn't really need it since she already was wide awake this early in the morning.

Without thinking about it too much, the pale skinned girl went around the counter and headed to the sofa to get more comfortable and kill some time until someone dropped by at the shop.

There had at least one of those guys to show up here sometime, right?

She asked herself a bit startled as she couldn't quite find an answer to it at the moment.

Hoshi suddenly remembered the night before and wondered whether the king and Anna had gone home.

Where did that red head and a small girl like her even live to begin with…?

She slumped down on the couch as her eyes stumbled upon the guy in front of her.

"Oh!" She muttered and remembered her not being the only one that had crashed at the bar, again.

"I almost forgot that guy was still here…"

The girl looked at the young man with helpless eyes.

Should she wake him up? After all, he didn't seem to have left to go home the past night and his parents had to be worried about him…If he still had any, she figured and took another look at the teen, rolled up on the couch.

He was lying on the right side, which was why she could see his face to begin with and his cheek rested on his shoulder while his nose was buried in the soft cushions what made him look even more- let's say- peaceful.

Giving it a second thought, it was the first time she saw that young guy without a beanie covering his chest nut hair which was quite messy. She sighed again, stood up after shaking her head to refresh her thoughts and walked back to the counter again as she figured it would upset her too, being stared at like that while she was sleeping like he did.

…Not that she would ever be so defenseless as him- of course.

"…What am I?" She murmured and lightly slapped her face to literally 'screw' her head on right.

"…A stalker…?!" She continued slightly pissed at herself for being that nosy about something so trivial.

"Huuuuh…" She sighed again as she didn't know what to do that early in the morning.

For the first half an hour, the girl had climbed up the counter and sat there cross-legged with the cup of coffee in her hands and stared out of the window without really doing anything useful.

After another ten minutes of utter boredom, she decided to work in the kitchen and slid off her seat and started cleaning up the counter, the sink and then went even further and polished all the glasses on the shelves.

As the first citizens were walking by the bar, Hoshi started to wonder when exactly, if at all, one of the staff would drop by this day.

There was nothing to do for her at the moment and that started bothering her although she usually wasn't some squirrelly kid that would complain whenever there was nothing interesting going on. Normally, when there were other people around, that might still be sleeping, she would barge into their room when it was past 12 pm already to simply wake them up, but this time was different; the guy sleeping on the couch was almost like a stranger to her and she wasn't in her own home; plus, it wasn't even 10 am.

At least she still had that degree of decency in situations like this.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a pretty damaged looking 'smart phone' and plugged her headphones in, switched it on and zapped through her music to make time pass faster.

With her head resting on the palms of her hand, her look wandered around the room and stopped at the door that led downstairs. She wondered if the king and the tiny doll like girl were down there and whether she should check if they were still sleeping.

For a short time, she thought about taking a look at it and then instantly decided that what she was thinking of was just mental garbage she dared to let pop up in her head out of boredom.

Never, really never, would she really go where that sleeping beast of a man was, just to put her life on the line. She flicked her forehead and shook her head slightly ashamed of her own thoughts.

Softly humming the melody of the song that randomly started playing in her ears, she let her thoughts slide even further off to a somewhere far away place at the back of her mind.*****

She had must have been listening to her music just like that for quite a while since when she looked at the clock on the wall in front of her, another hour had almost passed.

The clouds from early in the morning had disappeared, made way for the sun, which had started lighting up the place like crazy and the girl lowered the volume on her cell and listened to the noises around her.

She stayed completely silent for a few moments before she put her headphones back in her ears as nothing seemed different, but right as she was about to space out again, there was a sudden movement somewhere behind her in the back of the room.

The girl turned around on her bar stool and waited almost eagerly for a clearer sign that the guy on the couch was waking up.

The sound of a body turning around on the cushions came from the couch as the guy made rustling noises.

A halfhearted groan came from his throat before he decided to open his eyes and finally sat up.

Still a bit sleepy, his look wandered around his surroundings and he slightly squint at the bright light that came shining through the glass, had flooded the place which he was in and tickled his nose.

"Morning, sleepy-face." A sudden voice came from the counter and he jerked his head around in shock as he had thought he was the only one in the bar like always when he slept over here accidentally.

The words belonged to the woman sitting on a barstool with an indifferent look on her young face and one of her headphones dangling from her neck.

"Uhuh." He replied quite disoriented with a nod and blinked at the one in front of him several times before realizing who exactly was in the same room as him.

"Urgh…" He uttered disapprovingly as a startled look showed up on his now completely awake face

The girl he looked at quite surprised had crossed her legs, leant with her hands on her knees and wore a slightly oversized green checked lumberjack shirt, which almost reached down to the middle of her thighs.

Her look had changed at his sudden outburst of utter disapproval and she raised one of her eyebrows while giving him a calm look. After a moment of what seemed like a battle of who could stare at the other more fiercely, the long haired woman sighed and slightly turned her head away since she had to have noticed him becoming more and more nervous.

"Hey." She started with that clear voice of hers.

"Kamamoto told us to make sure you went home when you woke up again." The girl continued with closed eyes.

"But I guess that doesn't matter at the moment."

Now, as she had finished, her look at him had become friendlier an she sat up straight.

Slightly taken aback, Yata had to concentrate to not turn red as he tried to tell himself it was just a girl and that there was nothing to be so nervous about; just…a harmless girl…

Damn it-

His cheeks flushed red and he had to avert his eyes to avoid becoming even more of an idiot as he already must have looked like to her.

But surprisingly, the girl didn't seem to be annoyed by his strange behavior; rather, she seemed to not really care about it at all as a weak sign of a smile showed up on her lips just for the breach of the moment. As the teen with the chestnut hair had gotten hold of himself again, he suddenly jumped up on his feet as he seemed to have remembered something quite important – whatever the hell it was.

"What time is it?!" He tensely asked the slightly shorter girl on the counter.

"Calm down." She started with a calm voice as he lifted her hands reassuringly.

"It's only a few minutes past 10."

At these words, he obviously seemed relieved as he let out a deep breath and literally slumped as he relaxed his body from the sudden exaggeration of as he had overreacted.

"Aaah…God, I'm lucky." He surprisingly let out and caused the girl to suppress her chuckle while taking a fast sip out of her already empty mug.

Forgetting his slight fear of females, Yata had walked up to the bar and looked out of the steamed up windows.

The dark brown haired girl slid down off her barstool, put her right headphone back into her ear and walked around the counter.

"Wanna have something for breakfast?" She interrupted the short guys' thoughts and made him look at her again with a flabbergasted expression on his young face. He gave her an inquiring look as if he didn't really understand what she meant with the question, or the word 'breakfast' in general. Instead, there was a rumbling noise coming from his stomach as if he had just been reminded that he was starving at this exact moment.

Yata instantly put his hand to where the sound had come from and lowered his eyes in anger of his belly that kept begging for food although his mind tried to convince him of the opposite. The girl let out a cough and acted as if she hadn't heard anything what made the look on the chestnut haired teen become even more pissed before she chuckled and raised her voice again.

"Pancakes should be fine, I guess?" She asked with a provoking tone and smirked as she saw his face lighten up at the word 'pancakes'.

Hoshi had quickly gone from the fridge over to the oven and already heated a frying pan after she had prepared everything else in just a few seconds.

The slightly dumbfounded guy just slumped down on one of the barstools near the counter while blankly watching at the fast movements of the person in front of him while sitting there, unable to do anything but stare.

Before he actually noticed it, the girl was already busy watching the breakfast as it was already half done, still sizzling in the frying pan.

Hoshi, in the meantime, had a problem finding a plate to stack the food as she was looking at every place in her reach while letting out curses as she couldn't seem to find them. The guy on the counter raised an eyebrow as he noticed her fidgeting around and stretching the most she could to reach the upper shelves that were, to her disadvantage, way beyond where she could outstretch her arms.

"Dammit, that asshole Kusanagi for hiding his fricking plates up there…!" The girl hissed as she was about to climb up the counter just to get there while complaining without decency.

Yata had to concentrate to not burst out in laughter as he saw her short figure acting so frustrated like that from behind.

After a few minutes in which she kept complaining about that '_goddamn, good for nothing son of a bitch_', which should by no means be taken seriously, she had finally found the plates after giving the young guy behind her a desperately questioning look after which he pointed at another shelf to her left.

Almost instantly, his jumpiness around the girl was gone as he had noticed how easy it was to piss her off. With a relieved sigh, she turned around, carefully placed the food she had made in front of the chestnut haired guy and gave him an apologizing look.

"Well – Sorry about that just now, forget what you saw, okay?"

The young pale skinned woman cleared her throat as she had calmed down again and made a more friendly face again.

Before waiting for his reply, she went back to cleaning up the kitchen and left a crooked smile on the young guy's face as he started eating as he suddenly realized his burning hunger that he hadn't noticed before.

* * *

A mere 15 minutes after that, Yata leant back in his seat and looked quite happy after eating a breakfast like that.

"Well, that was refreshing…" He subconsciously uttered and earned a "Thanks." from the girl that smiled while looking at her '_smart phone_' and searched for a certain song.

As she seemed to have found it, her face looked up at the guy in front of her who didn't notice she was watching him a he rubbed his eyes.

"…You got bed head." Hoshi chuckled and pointed at his hair stat stood away from his head in any imaginable direction. The short guy went over to the couch, grabbed his beanie from the table and put it on again.

"Someone took it off while I was asleep…" Yata started and picked up his large headphones.

"Was quite a bad idea." He continued and let out a grunt while making a strange sign with his hands to the girl's direction which most probably should describe the mess on his head.

"Well that was Kusanagi-san." The girl stood behind the counter and chuckled while making another cup of 'Latte Macchiato' for herself.

"Thank him later." She ended her sentence in a provoking way.

Now, Yata looked at the girl with an irritated look on his face as he seemed to have forgotten his wear of women.

"Why?" The young guy raised his eyebrows.

"It's regular closing day."

The girl froze for a short moment as the meaning of his words reached her before she turned around to the irritated looking guy in the middle of the room.

"That would explain why I've been practically alone in here for the whole morning…"

Her light green eyes looked a bit annoyed as she massaged her temples with her thumbs while furrowing her eyebrows and letting out a deep sigh.

Hoshi didn't really know what to think of the situation after the chestnut haired guy had told her that. After all, she was in a land where she hadn't seen anything apart from Shizume city, where the bar was. Hesitantly, the pale skinned woman walked up and down in the room and was followed by a pair of hazel colored eyes which kept on watching her quite confused as he didn't know what was going on.

In addition, he started to feel nervous again since there was a girl around him which caused him to be unable to speak a single word without turning red. He couldn't help but be embarrassed for suddenly feeling like that again after being just fine around the exact same person for more than half an hour. _(What was kind of a new record…)_

The chestnut haired man went over to the couch and slumped down to not make it look as if he was that nervous all of a sudden.

Only a few minutes later, the door was carefully opened and the sound of the doorbell made both of the teens flinch as the turned to the entrance.

"Dammit-" Hoshi started slightly pissed.

"Isn't it regular closing day? Who the fuck would –"Then, she stopped abruptly as she stared into their '_customers_' face.

"Kusanagi-san!" The girl uttered in surprise and her stern face instantly lit up as she saw the look on the older man's face as he seemed to think '_What_ _exactly did I do now…?_'.

"Aah, I see-"He started talking in a singing tone.

"Sleeping beauty finally woke up." His eyes were wandering over to the couch on which the shorter man was sitting before he jumped out of his seat.

"What? You mean me…?" Yata piped up quite hesitantly and not even half as furious as he would normally have reacted to an '_insult_' like that.

Kusanagi ignored the younger guy's halfhearted outburst and gave him a friendly smile before he closed the door to his bar behind his back and pulled off the scarf around his neck. The blonde man looked at the upset girl in front of him with a soft smile before walking into the room.

"Has your luggage arrived already?" His gentle voice didn't seem to surprise her as she started to relax and settled down.

"No, not that I know." She replied with her calm voice and looked a bit more serious.

The tall man came a bit closer to the smaller girl and gave her a testing look as he watched her face with careful eyes. He slightly squint as he walked past her and put on a friendly face again.

"What kind of clothes are these…?" His voice sounded provoking and he raised an eyebrow while smirking at the woman's outfit. She closed her eyes, let out a sigh and continued with a mockingly clear tone.

"They're mine of course." She replied softly which the older man countered with a smug look in his eyes.

"What are you, my mom…?!" The girl turned around, almost slapped her hair through Kusanagis face and walked around the counter. The older man chuckled teasingly and ruffled her fringe.

"Hey, won't you at least brush this hair of yours?" He started and slightly pulled the girl on a few longer strands of dark brown hair.

"Look, they're in a mess." His long fingers were brushing through the 'ocean' of chocolate colored threads as if he tried to substitute a comb.

"Playing nanny, are we?" The one to which the hair in his hands belonged uttered with a quite friendly voice.

Kusanagi let out another chuckle and pushed his glasses up his nose. Then, he turned around to one of his fellow members who was sitting on the couch while listening to his music.

"Yata-chan." The younger male's head faced the other as he looked at his taller friend with indifferent eyes.

"Have you been here the whole night again?"

The teen gave him a slight nod as an answer and kept looking attentively at the one next to the counter.

"Go home and come back after taking a shower." He smiled softly.

"I guess it's not good to be here all the time." The blonde continued before raising his voice again, now a bit more serious.

"Even for someone like you."

The instant his words ended, Yata got up, made a sign with his hand instead of saying goodbye and walked out the bar quietly. The young guy had stepped down the stairs outside and disappeared out of their view and left empty looks on the girl's and the older man's face. Now that they were alone, the pale skinned woman let the fake calm expression leave her face and she lowered her eyes sternly.

Kusanagi let out a sigh as his friendly expression changed place with a more bitter one. The young woman looked up to Kusanagi with a slight glint of worry in her calm, light green eyes before stepping backwards and leaning on the counter.

"…You guys will be fine, right?" She uttered in a soft tone as she stared out of the window.

The older blonde didn't answer and walked around the bar to the cupboard as he took off his coat and put it inside.

"We're still a bit in shock, you know." He replied as he lowered his voice to a whisper and hid his face from the woman behind him as he turned his back to her. The look on her young face became slightly devoid while her eyes rested on the taller persons' shoulders that just seemed so much more fragile as they normally looked since Kusanagi would never show himself feeling down to other people as easily as he did now.

After another couple of minutes that were filled with a tense silence, the tall man in front of her straightened his back and lifted up his head before he started talking with a calmer voice again.

"From where do you take that confidence of yours?" His head slightly turned around as he continued.

"He is with us, there's no need for you to watch over us."

The girl flinched as his voice sounded warm all of a sudden and a soft smile appeared on his face once more.

Hoshi wanted to start talking back to him but stopped as she didn't know what exactly she should say to him in such a situation. Instead, she came over to him, placed her emptied mug into the dishwasher and put on a cheeky face while smirking up to the taller man's face.

"I'll be upstairs." She uttered and was about to walk away from the blonde bartender.

After a few steps, she suddenly paused as she noticed that the man behind her seemed to try saying something to her again, so the younger girl waited.

"I'm glad you're here again…" His words came out softly as it was nothing more than a whisper, what sounded more like he wa stalking to himself rather than to the girl next to him.

She waited another moment before she slowly lifted up her arm and reached out with her hand with a soft smile on her face. With her slender fingers, she touched the older man's shoulder and patted his back without saying a word before she walked away and left him by himself in the empty room as she made her way up the stairs.

* * *

Hoshi knew she wasn't that much of help for the other members of HOMRA since she couldn't quite grasp their pain of having lost an important friend. And although she had been his sibling and she had cared for him a lot, she felt like she didn't have the permission to be down because of his death and show it to anyone while she let it hit her quite hard. Totsuka was gone, but it wasn't her that mourned over him the most, she almost had never been there back when he was still alive, so why would she be allowed to cry over him when others were more devastated as they had known him way better than she had?

They had their king by their side and he seemed to be the reason for them to keep going on although their '_center_' had been cut out of their daily lives just like that.

* * *

The girl had reached the door that led to the apartment Which now belonged to her for the moment. With hesitant movements, she pressed it open and stepped into the, by sunlight that came through the windows, flooded room. She sucked in the fresh winter air that came rushing in from the opened balcony door and let out a sigh after quietly shutting off her room from the corridor outside on the second floor.

Her naked feet were walking to the bed that had been placed in the right corner of the room, next to where another door led to a bathroom that had only been in use of guests those past years.

As an indication of her being quite worn out, she slightly tripped and put her fingers up to her temples to shake off the feeling of nausea that was shivering down her spine.

With a calculating look on her stern expression, the pale girl had reached the king sized bed after a few seconds of frail movement and bent down to the bag that she had put on top of the unused blankets. The young woman rummaged around inside a moment before she pulled out a PDA and squat down on the bed as she waited for it to turn on.

The look on her blank face seemed almost petrified as her fierce eyes glared on the screen that had just lit up while her fingers clutched the small computer and slid over the touch screen.

Her thin hands were slightly shaking as she sat there, hunching over the device in her fingers as she stared at the picture of a white haired high school student with algid eyes.

The young woman gritted her teeth in pure hatred and let out a choked curse at no other than the man, who called himself the '_colorless king'. _

She didn't know who exactly he was, but the message of the video in which she had seen him for the first time was clear.

He was her older brother's killer.

**#3 Chapter of**

**- Atatakai egao de hitotsu –**

**END**

* * *

***Part of the lyrics of Fearless by Falling up ;) Guess that's the song Hoshi listened to that time.**

**author's note: **

**This was a chapter which I thought was complete crap while I was writing it but as I proof read just now, I really came to like it. I tried to work on the way I keep describing peoples expressions, but then, I utterly failed at apostrophizing correctly .**

**Well, what the hell.  
Also, this chapter wasn't meant to be that long since I wanted to let a few more things happen, but as you can see, that failed too XD  
I got the feeling that I keep talking about nonsense in about every damn line - what would be mainly the cause for the poor plot development...**

**Well, what the hell ~**


	5. Chapter 4

**Some guest just asked me via review if there was gonna be a pairing in this fanfic. Since I can't reply to him/her, I thought I'd do it here, right before the new chapter starts :)  
****I don't think I will make it all too clear whether my OC has feelings for any of the displayed characters, but I can already tell you that there will be scenes which might give you a little more insight on at least that part about her ;)  
I don't want to be a spoiler, so I'm not revealing any further details yet^^**

* * *

**#4 Chapter of**

**- "Atatakai egao de hitotsu" –**

It was still pretty early on the 13th of December and the sun was high above the bar in Shizume city.

As it was regular closing day, no customers were inside, except for 2 members of HOMRA, which you really shouldn't count to the visitors that actually paid for what they ordered every time they came over.

Kusanagi, who would normally stand behind the counter, was leaning on to one of the couches and listened to Kamamoto taking about random stuff while the blonde bartender was smoking another cigarette.

Anna had appeared from somewhere and sat on the couch while holding the drink the bartender had given her in her fingers and looked blankly ahead. Even the king had come to join them since the bright light of the sun had most probably woken him up and bothered him too much as to be able to fall asleep again.

The read head was making himself comfortable by taking up almost the whole sofa which he and the little girl were sitting on while quietly listening to the words of their fellow member.

There was an almost completely full ashtray between the couches which Kusanagi had placed on the table to prevent the messy red haired man from carelessly dropping the ashes on the blonde man's beloved floor of his bar.

From somewhere even further in the back of the bar, there was the faint sound of music playing a calming melody which didn't bother the 'customers' too much.

As always, the quite chubby, light blonde haired man was chewing on some snacks he had brought over with him like most of the time he decided to hang out at the bar. While he told the others around him about stuff going on in the shopping district of Shizume city, the blonde bartender was listening with closed eyes and a cigarette dangling from his lips as he seemed to enjoy hearing about a few good things every once in a while.

The king lay on the couch with his arms crossed behind the back of his head and a relaxed expression on his slightly tired face while the silver haired girl kept her hand on his elbow as if she was watching over him as she quietly nodded to the music that played softly in the background.

The clock on the wall behind the counter shortly clicked as another minute passed.

It was already half past 1 pm, when the door upstairs opened and the girl showed up in the room downstairs shortly after. She put her long bangs behind her ears before walking up to the other members of HOMRA that didn't seem to be surprised as she showed up in the doorframe.

"So you're here again?" Hoshi asked indifferently as she stepped closer to Kamamoto who stopped eating for a moment while waving at her with a big grin before he swallowed his food to give an answer.

"I always come here on regular closing days…"

As he ended his sentence, the chubby man went back to eating and took a huge bite from the fish shaped taiyaki* in his hands.

The girl chuckled as she saw at least him being his usual self, except for their king, who spent his time lying on the couch, trying to take an afternoon nap as always when there was nothing to do and he got bored.

The long haired woman had only seen him nod off twice in an ongoing conversation before, so she wasn't 100 percent sure whether it was a habit of his, or he fell asleep accidentally.

Well, the second was more than just ridiculous since no one would be able to sleep at noon when there were people talking around them after sleeping through the whole night, making it more than 12 hours in a row…

The short girl had drifted off in her thoughts and simply stared at her kings face with curious eyes, before she realized it and shook her head while letting out a skeptical sigh before turning around to the smaller girl on the couch who kept patting the tall, red haired mans head softly.

"Did you sleep well?" Her voice became more friendly while talking to Anna who replied with a soft smile before nodding.

The older girl took her gesture as a '_yes_' and directed her attention to the blonde man behind her who was still calmly smoking another cigarette.

Kusanagi looked at her face with indifferent eyes and waited for the shorter girl to say something to him or at least tell him what she wanted. She raised her voice and looked at him with a faint smile.

"Could you lend me a map of Shizume city?"

Her words sounded calm and clear as always and the tall man in front of her exhaled slowly before he put out his cigarette and gave the girl an answer.

"No need."

Hoshi raised one of her dark eyebrows wondering what he meant before the blonde man continued more friendly.

"There'll be some of our guys to escort you to whatever place you'd like to go."

Now, after he had finished his reply, he gave the girl a crooked smile as he looked at her irritated face in amusement. Hoshi had stepped back and leant onto the back of one of the sofas with her arms crossed in front of her chest.

"Well-" she started briefly.

"I don't think someone like Bandou or rather Chitose would be fine with going to a place like that with me."

Her voice turned sarcastic and a twisted look appeared on her calm face before she let out a chuckle and shook her head.

"I see." Kusanagi uttered still with that crooked smirk on his lips as he didn't seem to have thought of someone like those two idiots to accompany her.

"It's a good thing you've already changed. There's someone who already wanted to visit his grave today; might as well take you along."

The blonde man raised his hands in defense before he added another few words with a soft chuckle.

"Of course I didn't ask those two."

The girl closed her eyes in relief before she went over to the cupboard in the right corner of the bar to take out one of the scarves inside that belonged to her.

She wrapped the long piece of knitted green wool around her neck until it partly covered her face and she fixed it with a simple knot at the back of her shoulders. As the short girly was heading for the exit already, the blonde man next to her uttered another sentence to make her pause until he finished talking to her.

"Just follow the road on the right side after you step down the stairs. That guy is already waiting for you on the corner, just meet up with him."

Hoshi turned her head to give him a nod and sent a soft smile to the taller man before waving at the other 3 on the couches and opened the door.

"At least put on a coat, it's cold outside!" Kusanagi called after her as the girl stepped out into the winterly afternoon sun without listening to the older mans advice. She just closed the door behind her back, made a sign with her hand as she slightly pulled on her long-sleeved shirt to show him it would be okay and then left with a provoking chuckle.

Kamamoto laughed at the older mans hopeless expression and started talking to him in a reassuring was.

"Hey-hey. You know how she is, since it's her, there's no need to be worried about the cold."

Kusanagi kept looking out the window as his chubby friend had finished his sentence with another laugh.

"Haaah…What am I gonna do with you…?" The tall man took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes sternly before taking another short look at the door out of which the young girl had left just a mere minute ago.

"As careless as always…" He sighed and turned around before walking past the counter to get back to work although there actually wasn't anything to do anymore since a certain someone had been meddling with his kitchen just this morning.

"I'm more concerned about whether he'll be okay around her, to be honest…" Kamamoto said in a concerned was as his eyes met with Anna's and he couldn't help but look helpless at the thought of the one who would meet up with Hoshi in a few minutes.

* * *

The sound of feet on the frozen cobble in fast movement was echoing throughout the cold alleys that led away form the bar to the center of Shizume city.

Two chucked feet were making their way towards the corner at the end of the street a few hundred meters up ahead, where the sun was shining brightly and had set the place in warm, glistering rays of light.

Hoshi was jogging the way as she figured just simply walking would take up too much time and she really didn't want to make the guy who was supposed to meet up with her wait in the chilling cold.

Not that she minded the low temperature in winter; it was rather like she enjoyed the freezing air around her that filled her lungs whenever she took a deep breath to take in every last bit of the cold season, that had suddenly 'befallen' Shizume city without a warning, so it seemed. The long haired girl felt an appeasing chill on her face and her hands since those were the only parts on her body that weren't covered by a layer of cotton.

As the girl could already see the corner in front of her, she slowed down to avoid running into whoever was waiting for her. She put a few strands of her hair which bothered her behind her ear and watched her surroundings more closely in search of a familiar face while she kept walking on.

The second she stepped into the, by sunlight flooded crossing of 3 alleys, the light came shining right at her face what caused her to suddenly stop as she almost bumped into one of the citizens walking by.

As the girl lifted her head to politely apologize to the person, she looked at one of the HOMRA members; most probably the one who came to '_pick**' **_her up.

The guy in front of her blinked ins surprise and then leant back a bit before he bowed down and his cheeks flushed red.

"Ah, I'm sorry for that…" The pale girl who now faced him uttered and gave him a calm look from her light green eyes.

As he watched her more closely, her face was partly covered with a scarf and she wore a black pullover with dark blue jeans and a pair of slightly worn out looking, grey colored chucks, what made her look a bit more formal than with her comfy clothes from this morning.

"It's you-" He said shortly and turned his face away from her to calm down again before he continued.

"Let's go." Yata told her, stepped down from his skateboard which he wouldn't need right now and waited for the shorter girl to follow him.

Hoshi looked at the back of his head and started moving in his direction after giving him an agreeing nod.

The chestnut haired teen still felt a bit nervous as he had seen her stand in front of him like that all of a sudden and his eyes still ached a little since the sun had blinded him the moment he had looked in the girl's direction. He came to notice that he wasn't even half as uncomfortable as he normally was when a female human being was around him, that caused him to feel even more awkward.

With his skateboard under his right arm, Yata kept walking with his head in the clouds as he was thinking about it more than he really needed.

"You put on dark clothes because of the place we're headed for?" A clear voice came from next to him as the girl seemed to have noticed his black sweater and dark pants. He took a short look to his left to give a proper answer.

"Uuh…" he slightly stammered as his face turned red once again, just like it always did.

"You're no different, right?" he finally asked and tried to get a hold of his shaky voice.

The girl's eyes looked up to his face from the side in a curious way before she turned her head away since she figured he would start to feel unpleasant if she continued to watch him like that. The slightly taller guy next to her had put his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers while he kept walking ahead.

Normally, the girl would start feeling weird whenever there was someone beside her and an awkward silence was going on, but she knew that starting a conversation right now would cause the guy next to her to get uncomfortable all of a sudden, so she just looked around her and saw how the scenery changed from grey city blocks to a more natural setting, the more they walked.

After a while, it started to cool down even more and the sky above the girls head was covering up with heavy clouds.

…Looks like it'll snow soon. Hoshi thought with her eyes locked onto the white rooflines way up the ground.

Yata, who didn't feel nervous anymore since the cold was creeping up his back, his legs and even his neck, pulled the beanie, that covered his hair like always, even deeper into his face to prevent the freezing cold from sending shivers down his spine even more.

By now, the two of them had reached a small alley that led to a large stone fence which seemed to form a circle around some kind of park.

The longhaired girl looked up as she noticed the dried grass under her feet change into concrete. A bit further ahead, Hoshi could see the trail turn into stone stairs and as the young guy continued moving and followed the narrow path, she realized it was not a park, but a graveyard they were headed for, which lay behind those walls.

The chestnut haired teen already reached the fence gate, pushed it and opened the rusty entrance with an eerie creak as he made way for the younger girl and let her pass before he entered. The pale skinned girl stood in the entrance of a vacant stone 'field' on which several hundreds of tombstones had been placed, so she figured as she stared at the deserted place in front of her feet.

She almost didn't notice the guy accompanying her as he closed the gate behind their backs and walked a few steps forward just like her. He calmed down and straightened his back as if he was showing respect to all of what lied underground on the graveyard which both of them stared at.

"This way." The voice of the normally so cheerful guy sounded way too calm as he continued to walk towards one of the paths that had been created so the visitors could freely walk through the lined up graves without accidentally stepping on the stones.

The young girl noticed the sudden change of atmosphere as it seemed like the wind had stopped blowing the second they had entered the gate.

She had been to quite a few funerals those past years and she had honestly never been one of the people that came back to pay a visit to the recently deceased and mourned over their beloved persons' graves. It had always been the same, no matter how close she was to them, Hoshi never felt sadness or guilt when she was to tell the buried ones her last goodbye.

While she slowly followed the older teen in front of her, her gaze wandered over all the graves that were positioned to her right and to her left, each of them creating a new path, leading to other tombstones.

This was no 'cold' place, the girl realized thoughtfully as she looked at all those writings on every grave they passed. This place was filled with memories of the dead – and the mourning people at the same time.

After a moment of silently walking behind each other, Yata slowly stopped and waited for the shorter girl to catch up to him. He seemed to try to figure out some words to direct at the young woman and put on a serious, almost stern look on his blank face.

"In which way were you related to Totsuka-san?" His calm voice uttered and caused the pale skinned girl to look at him slightly startled by his sudden words.

Then, after a moment in which she thought of a correct way to give the hazel eyed guy an answer, she lifted up her head and gave the older man a calm look.

"He was my older brother." She said carefully and then added the rest of her sentence, ignoring the fact that the taller of them had flinched quite remarkably at that.

"Although I couldn't see him much." Her words came out a bit too soft as she had intended them to sound like.

There was another moment of silence before the chestnut haired guy lowered eyes and turned his bitter face away from the pale girl's eyes.

"He's there, at the very end of this path."

Hoshi gave him a nod and made a somewhat unidentifiable expression before the young man added another sentence, now slightly more friendly as he stepped back a bit to symbolize the girl she should walk past him.

"You go first, I'll stay here."

The look on the pale girl's face lit up for a brief moment before she blinked and gave him a warm look as she replied calmly.

"I'll make it short." She told the slightly taller one of them and softly lowered her eyes as she noticed him stepping from one foot to the other as if he was starting to feel the cold surrounding them.

And before Yata could speak up and stammer a few nonsensical words in surprise, the short girl already started walking up to the last grave in the line about 20 meters up ahead with quiet movements.

It took the young man quite a few seconds until he finally was himself again. He shook his head and turned his back to the one, that was headed for his friends tombstone. The short guy made a bitter face as he imagined how it would be for him to visit a family members grave.

He let out a sigh and let a muffled curse follow as he rubbed the palms of his hands against each other since the cold was starting to become a bother to him. To get his thoughts off the chilling air around him, he looked up to the thick, white colored clouds that stretched over the sky like it had already frozen up completely.

With the neck of his sweatshirt pulled up almost to his chin and his arms tightly wrapped around his upper body, he gazed at the lithic image of white and light grey merging and blending together, a thousand kilometers over his head.

It really does look like snow… He came to notice as his warm breath slowly faded in the cold air around him.

* * *

The pale skinned girl was slowly walking to the last grave in the line, in front of which a few flowers had been placed, probably by Kusanagi-san or one of the others. The dead petals were catching her eyes as she bent down and looked at the inscription on the white marble stone that was carved into the even surface.

Her eyes lowered as she picked up the dead flower bouquet with deliberate fingers so she wouldn't accidentally crush the dried up gift someone had lovingly arranged for the sole purpose of putting it on his grave.

A glint of sadness wallowed in the light green colored, clear eyes of the woman kneeling down in front of the small memorial of her brother. The girl calmly put the shriveled flowers back to where her hand had picked them up from while her look gazed up to the solid letters as she placed her fingers onto the cold stone.

She closed her eyes as she had read the short line beneath her white fingers and let out a voiceless sigh while she slowly got up on her feet again.

"It will all work out, huh?" Her voice was slightly muffled as she repeated the phrase again for herself out loud.

A bitter smile deformed her colorless lips as a cold expression made its way onto the young, yet pale face.

She was staring at the grave in front of her – Totsuka's grave – and it didn't seem like the girl would say anything else, until another, even more bitter look showed up in her eyes, the girl had lowered at the familiar sentence, her older brother had used to tell her quite often as he had still been alive.

It was true; she missed his face, that soft smile of his and the clear voice which she hadn't heard for almost 4 years.

But still; her face didn't show anything more than just an indifferent expression and a slight coldness in her normally so calm eyes as she stood there and wrapped the scarf around her neck even tighter.

What the girl really felt was clear though.

It wasn't as easy as she thought it would be.

As after a while even her lips were shaking and her body seemed to do what he wanted as it wasn't necessary to hold her composure anymore, the girl couldn't help it and let out a few muffled words.

"So you really did disappear…"

It was nothing more than a whisper she pressed out behind her clenched teeth as she rather hissed it with a painful look in her eyes.

"…Totsuka."

The simple word just wouldn't come out right as her body had started to tremble heavily.

With pressure building up behind her closed eyelids, Hoshi laid back her head into her neck and face the gaping emptiness that filled the sky above her head.

With a last deep breath, she opened her eyes again and let a helpless smile show up on her face as she let go of everything that kept restraining her and raised her voice while watching the grave in front of her pale face…

* * *

The young man with chestnut hair was leaning onto one of the stone walls enclosing the graveyard while waiting for time to pass.

He had closed his eyes and pulled up his shoulders with his hands min the pockets of his jeans as he tried to block off the cold air since it started freshening up even more.

Yata started regretting to not have put on gloves or at least wrapped a scarf around his neck since the beanie could only cover his ears although he had pulled it into his face even deeper.

Just how many minutes have passed…? The young man asked himself with a short look over his shoulders as he didn't dare to turn around completely and walk up to the girl; after all, he really wasn't fond of interrupting the woman at whatever she did a few 20 meters behind his back. He felt a soft breeze coming from behind him which he hadn't noticed before.

There were sounds of dried up leaves coming over to him as well as the rustling noises of tree branches from all around him. With everything that reached his ears, it didn't seem like he was practically alone on the graveyard at all.

After a while, the young man was slowly moving his shoulders from one side to the other to keep himself occupied. He started relaxing his stiff back that had been shaking from the cold as he was humming along with some sing that was suddenly stuck in his head without actually noticing it.

The melody that kept repeating over and over again seemed familiar to him and after a few seconds, he realized that the sound wasn't only coming from himself.

There were bits and pieces of soft sounding words swaying and echoing around the cold tombstones and the chestnut haired guy opened his eyes as he finally noticed that they actually belonged to complete sentences which he now could even hear clearly. His hazel eyes blinked in surprise as the short guy finally turned around to where the source of the all too familiar melody seemed to well up from.

What he saw in the moment he looked down the path between the graves, came more than just unexpected.

He couldn't see anyone apart from the longhaired woman with who he had come her, but the melody still continued echoing around him. It didn't took him any longer to finally figure it out completely –

Yata slowly started moving into the girl's reaction as he realized that he actually recognized the song she was singing with an indescribably clear voice.

He quietly listened to the soft words the one a few meters in front of him was letting out with her high voice while she kept her eyes closed. It seemed like she had started repeating a certain part of the melody since he couldn't quite recall in actually being that long.

The longhaired girl stood in front of the grave that belonged to her brother, while she continued singing the song to him with her back straightened completely.

Yata knew those lines all too well and let her words wash over him with a painful look on his face as he glanced away from the slightly smaller girl.

_"…Ikusen mono kousasuru michi de – _

_Bokura wa deaeta-_

_Massuguna, manazashi de-_

_Mirai o misueteta."_

As the chestnut haired teen gave it a closer look, he noticed that her voice was way too high compared to when she normally spoke with one of the fellow HOMRA members. He didn't want to call her attention to himself since e figured she would get angry at him for listening to her like that, so he kept his mouth shut and stared at her from the side as she seemed to have reached the last verse.

_"…Aka ni somatta yuuhi ni-_

_Chikatta kotoba wa,_

_Sepia no tsuki ni suikomarete yuku._

_Haruka musunda,_

_Atsui kizuna-_

_Douka towa ni,_

_Tsuzukimasu you ni."_

Her voice slowly faded out after she let out the last word and opened her eyes again.

With an indifferent expression on her face, she slightly tilted her head to the side and gave the short guy a quiet look and made him jump at her movement that seemed to have taken him aback.

Yata gulped heavily as he waited for her to react according to what he expected, but surprisingly, her clear eyes looked down to a place in front of his feet and showed the faint sign of a smile on her lips.

"My bad." Her voice sounded cold as she made the young guy flinch again.

"I took a bit too long, I guess." The pale skinned girl added slowly and looked at the grave in front of her again.

Unable to find the right words, Yata stood a bit too far away from her as to actually be able to have a proper conversation and his cheeks were bright red again.

After another minute of uselessly fidgeting around and not knowing how to act, the chestnut haired started moving his feet hesitantly into her direction.

As he had reached a point on which it wouldn't be awkward for him to stand next to her, the younger girl looked into the sky a bit further above the stone walls. She was completely calm and the taller guy started to relax a bit as he saw the slowly setting sun behind her rather small silhouette.

As if she didn't want to see it anymore, Hoshi avert her eyes from the giant, bright-orange colored sphere which looked like it was burning in the sky and let her view slide over her closer surroundings. She noticed the sudden temperature change as the last rays of light were taking away the warm feeling and left the graveyard behind in shadows while the night was about to swallow up the tombstones, including the two figures standing next to each other.

"U-Uh." The voice of the chestnut haired teen made the girl turn her head slightly to her right.

"You-" He started again, now even more tense.

"That was Totsuka's song." His voice was suddenly calm although he was still feeling a bit uncomfortable in his position as he looked right into the pale girl's face for the first time.

His eyes were fiercely locked on her although his face still seemed to be the colour of a light red, whether it was because of him being nervous, or just because of the cold around them; she couldn't tell exactly.

She had to lower her eyes after a while and gave him a nod while looking down to her brother's grave right in front of her numb feet.

The longhaired girl didn't reply properly and waited for another moment for him to eventually say another few words.

The longer they stood there, the colder it seemed to get and the slight breeze became more and more uncomfortable as even the girl had to hide her face in the woollen cloth around her neck although she was usually quite fond of low temperatures.

She knew that the young guy next to her didn't feel all too good since he was facing the remains of one of his former dear friends. That's what clearly showed on his bitter face as he stared down at the cold tombstone with painfully tensed eyes.

Hoshi felt awkward since it was obvious that he was actually in the position to mourn over him, even when the dead person was her very own brother. She felt out of place and let out a sigh as she stared up to the almost black sky above her head in silence.

The air around them was terribly cold and the girl breathed it in as if she didn't care that her lungs were already aching painfully because of that. She slowly sighed and watched the white cloud, that her breath had formed, float up and fade away after a few seconds already.

With a calm look to her right, the green eyed girl looked up to the young man next to her, who had quite a bitter expression on his usually cheeky face. She furrowed her eyebrows as a question popped up in her mind and she couldn't help but want to ask him about it.

Still hesitantly, her eyes lowered to his chin so he wouldn't get nervous if he was to accidentally look at her face as she slowly started.

"Say-"

The young guy flinched a little and seemed to listen to her although he didn't make another movement.

"It was you right?"

Again, the chestnut haired guy didn't give her an answer, but now, he had looked away from the grave at his feet and his eyes slightly wandered to his left slowly like he wanted her to continue.

The look on Hoshis face changed as she knew she was about to say something that might confuse and even upset him; she cleared her throat quietly and raised her voice once again, now more clearly than before.

"You were up there with him that night, weren't you."

Her words seemed to come out colder as she had planned and the girl almost wished she hadn't said something like that to the young guy while she noticed the movement he made while sucking in air to cool his head as if he was getting mad.

With his eyes closed tensely, he gritted his teeth and couldn't do anything more than give the girl a quiet nod instead of a reply.

Hoshi mustered his face carefully and slightly pulled back her head as she saw him clench his fists, desperately looking for words.

Yata was waiting for the girl to ask him another, even more painful question as he had to be careful not to snap at her although she actually hadn't done anything wrong.

In the spur of the moment, he felt like turning around and walking away since he simply couldn't stand this hollow place and he didn't want her to see his face on top of that.

Just then, he felt something softly touch his left shoulder.

The girl couldn't help but put on a bitter face as she saw Yatas bitter expression after she had asked him quite an inappropriate thing, so it seemed.

Without really knowing what exactly she did, she slowly lifted her arm and let her left hand rest on the slightly taller one's back.

The moment Yata felt her fingers on his shoulder, her jerked his head around and looked into the soft expression on her face as she lightly patted his back as if she was comforting him.

"That must've been hard for you."

Her words seemed to cut right through the air surrounding them as her voice was about to choke while talking to the young guy who stared at her with wide opened eyes.

The smile on the girl's pale lips seemed weak as she forced her face to look softly to reassure him. Before the chestnut haired guy could say anything, the girl walked past him and let go of his shoulder after uttering a last voiceless word that as nothing more than a muffled whisper.

"..Sorry."

The short guy swallowed heavily, confused about her acting like that.

The concerned look on her normally rather calm and not all too compassionate face didn't fit her at all, even he could spot that.

He stood there in complete silence as he seemed to have forgotten about the freezing cold around him for a second.

The place had become even colder and more empty as Hoshi was about to walk out the gate with fast steps and left the guy behind, who still stared at the empty place in front of him, where the girl had stood just a second ago.

…Why did she apologize? A voice in the back of his head asked confused as he blinked down to the grave that appeared to be emptily cold, completely different to how the one lying buried down below would have been if he hadn't died a week before…

With a last look at the inscription on the white marble stone, the young man sighed as he avert his eyes from it and turned around to go after the girl that had almost reached the entrance already.

It had gotten incredibly dark around him for one second to the other without him actually noticing it.

Something was off – he felt it.

**#4 Chapter of**

**"Atatakai egao de hitotsu"**

**- END -**

* * *

**author's note:**

**I had to let the chapter end at this point although I hadn't really finished it yet, to be honest.  
****I'm kind of sorry for taking more than a week to upload, but it's like the only thing I've done for the past couple of days was work, work and work.  
I got like 2 pages handwritten on my notebook, but what came after this scene felt really, really awkward and out of place, so I decided to save it for the next chapter :/**

**So yeah, feel free to aks me questions if some parts aren't 100 percent clear^^  
The last passages just seem so stupid to me, even while I wrote it by hand (in that beautifully distorted looking, angellike handwriting of mine - Just kidding.) :I**

**See you in a few days, or weeks or decades, or whatever amount of time it takes to write a few 20 pages ;)**

_**Banana no omo ga anata gata ni aru yō ni shimashou ! ~**_


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